Chapter Text
Something was wrong. Very, very wrong.
It was Earth Day. Aside from Arbor Day, it was the biggest day of the year to raise awareness about the environmental crisis and give back to the plant life under constant attack. And unlike the less popular Arbor Day, it was the largest show of hypocrisy by various celebrities to promote environmentalism despite the lifestyles they flaunted.
All in all, the perfect time for one Poison Ivy to make her appearance, destroy a few jet airliners, maybe do a musical number if her on-and-off friend Himiko Harley was able to convince her, and then make a dramatic escape so she could spend the last few hours before returning to Arkham on a date with a certain Caped Crusader.
So where was she?
Batman had checked Arkham, all the chemical plants, celebrity homes, and associated businesses, parks, nature reserves, swamps, docks, factories, industries, mining operations, mountains, and even florists in the entire Gotham Metropolitan Area. Nothing. Not so much as an errant flower petal.
He’d found Harley (or Himiko, if he needed to scare her with her given name), but she didn’t have a clue where Ivy might have gone off to. Ochako was on one of her “health kicks,” where she stopped stealing for a bit and worked with some security companies and the police to catch her competitors, so she didn’t have any current intelligence. He’d even reached out to Momo, but the League of Assassins was busy with something abroad and didn’t have any news for him.
Melissa and Dai hadn’t heard anything during their patrols, and the criminals they brought in were just as in the dark as he was. Even the supposedly intelligent Cluemaster and Riddler were stumped.
Checking with Mirio and the rest of the League, they said things were quiet on the Watchtower if Ivy was getting tangled up with something bigger than she could handle.
With nothing else for it, and Gotham remarkably quiet for once, Batman donned his public identity of philanthropist Izuku Midoriya, heading to the Midoriya Enterprises Earth Day gala to mingle and advocate for various sustainable practices he’d already switched his family company to. Secretly, he’d utilized some alien technology Mirio and Toshinori had donated, hoping to ignite some competition from other companies, which would eventually lead to a home-grown version rather than cheating. He thought Ibara would have liked that.
Making the rounds, Izuku kept a fake smile plastered on his face the entire time, careful to keep it genuine enough to trick the various investors and other notable guests into believing his persona. He recognized most of them, but a couple were outliers. Invites of his stockholders, plus-ones, and a few party-crashers.
At some point, he was called up to make a speech, just a prewritten little ditty which didn’t say anything of substance, but it got applause and a toast afterwards. It wasn’t meant to be earth-shattering, just the standard call to go green and protect the planet, but he couldn’t exactly do much more without being out of character.
There was a fundamental difference between Batman and Izuku. He was Batman, while Izuku was his mask. Batman was the hero who cared about the world and did something to change it. Izuku was the innocuous front, blandly trying to avoid scandal and give token aid while raking in the cash from his company, seemingly without any real leadership on his part.
With his speech done, it came time for the dances. There were a couple he took for a song or two so he could chat them up, gauge their company’s stance on things, or even just because trillionaire Izuku Midoriya absolutely wouldn’t miss his chance to waltz with a few of them, but he was just waiting for the time he could leave. He wasn’t even willing to waste his time on the food.
“May I have this dance?”
Turning from his current partner with a good-natured smile, Izuku’s expression went from blandly happy to shocked.
“Iv— Ibara…” he breathed.
She didn’t look anything like she had when he’d seen her last. Her hair was trimmed shoulder-length and styled so it looked like dreadlocks rather than vines. Instead of her usual lab coat and leaf-based clothes, she’d donned a red gown which modestly but tastefully accented her narrow frame. Based on the slight curve to the bottom, it seemed to have been sewn from giant rose petals. Her wedge heels were carved from polished wood, making every step a decisive snap.
“Y-yes, of course,” Izuku agreed, his former partner forgotten as he realized Ibara was still waiting for an answer.
Their hands met, and Izuku felt the soft, slightly green skin of her palms brushing against his own, far rougher ones. Yet she clasped them just as eagerly as he did hers. They swayed numbly as the music shifted to the next song, then began a slow waltz, their voices kept low to avoid drawing attention from other guests.
“I heard you were looking for me,” she said with a playful smile. “I’m flattered.”
“Well, it is our yearly tradition to meet up today,” he pointed out.
“It is,” she agreed with an incline of her head, “but I asked Shinji to handle it this year. He’s much better at the peaceful part of peaceful protest .”
“Ah. Well, he does tend to draw a crowd,” Izuku agreed, thinking of the last time Swamp Thing had called on the Justice League for support, and the rather extensive amount of PR work they had to do afterwards to reassure everyone that he was in no way a monster nor a supervillain.
“Large enough to stop planes from departing from private runways,” Ibara agreed with a giggle. “And because they’re all entirely legal, the helpless little victims can’t do anything but sit in their jets and sulk. The perfect crime, if I do say so myself.”
“Always the clever one,” he chuckled. “Though, I must say you’re not quite clever enough to figure out this one.”
“And which one is that?” she asked with a smirk.
“How you knew I was here, and how you knew to find me without my cowl,” he said darkly, but affectionately. “I know for sure Denki didn’t tell you.”
The mention of Ibara’s ex-boyfriend made her frown briefly. It was supposedly an amicable breakup, but with one thing and another, it had been hard on both of them, even before Denki’s brain had been half-fried, turning him into the half-silly, half-distraught Two-Face. A villain who, in an event so alarming that Izuku still had trouble accepting it to that day, somehow had been the first to learn his public identity, yet also chose to keep it a secret of his own free will.
“Not him, no,” she teased.
“But someone?” he pressed.
“Someone,” Ibara confirmed with a smirk.
He wasn’t called “The World’s Greatest Detective” for nothing. Someone who knew both his and Ibara’s real names. That narrowed the list a whole lot. Someone whom he hadn’t included in his questioning to find her location. That narrowed it even further and left only two possibilities. Either this person was trying to get them both distracted and harm them, or else was trying to help him.
“…it was Eri, wasn’t it—“
“Probably,” his daughter said from near his elbow.
Letting out a weary sigh, Izuku glanced down at her. She was wearing a midnight black dress her mother had probably bought her, alongside an innocent smile which was all her own.
“You do realize this means grounding, right, young lady?” he asked bluntly, raising an eyebrow.
Her red eyes sparkled pleadingly. Izuku took a breath and nodded towards the snack table.
“Make the most of your last night out before I lock you in your room.”
“Thank you, papa,” she beamed, giving him a quick hug before dashing off to get herself some sweets.
“She’s such a sweet girl,” Ibara cooed. “Nearly scared the lights out of me when she turned up in my laboratory and asked if I had plans. Your training, I take it?”
“I helped with refinement,” Izuku said humbly, “but her mother started her on the path.”
“I see,” his partner nodded, twisting him around so they’d avoid running into a rather vigorous couple. “And which of you passed on the hair and eyes? You certainly don’t look like an ancient servant of the Royal Family, but I’m not quite as adept with fauna physiology as with flora.”
Izuku grimaced a bit at that.
“Eri…got recessive traits from both sides,” he admitted, glancing away guiltily. “Her mother didn’t tell me about her until after he divorce, which…made for a bit of a shock. Especially since she wasn’t a year old like she should have been.”
“So she’s told me,” Ibara smirked. “Eri and Momo.”
Izuku gave up, resting his forehead against her shoulder in defeat.
“It was quite disheartening to learn that not two days after I offered you my number, you ended up married to another woman,” she teased playfully.
“It was a crazy few months,” he groaned. “And it was Ra’s’ fault.”
“And yet, you didn’t annul it until after the new year,” she pointed out, still teasing. Clearly, she knew the entire story. “Are you so easily taken in by a pretty face that you actually bought her 'no really, I’ve changed' act?”
“If I were, you’d never have lost to me,” Izuku frowned up at her.
“Well, I suppose that’s true,” she agreed as he straightened back up. “Though that begs the question: am I pretty enough for you to capture me ?”
Her question was more weighted than before. More significant. One, she wouldn’t have asked lightly.
“Would you want me to?” he asked, glancing around a bit nervously. “I have a lot of kids. Most of them adopted, but still. It’s a commitment.”
“Plenty of people to help me protest on weekends,” she pointed out.
“There won’t be any more crimes. And you’ll need to go to rehab.”
“Good. I’d hate moving too fast and jumping right into living in your gargantuan mansion. Where I’d probably get lost and end up going insane…again.”
“You’ll have a proper job at Midoriya Enterprises.”
“Real power for once. I’d date you just for that alone.”
“I have long hours. Wouldn’t be home much.”
“I’m sure we can think of fun activities for date night.”
“Then prove it,” Izuku said.
Ibara blinked at him, tilting her head.
“What?”
“Prove you mean it,” he directed her, leaning in. “Kiss me. If you mean it, you won’t poison me.”
Ibara turned the same color as her dress, but leaned in as well.
As it turned out, some people really meant it when they said they’d change for Earth Day.